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Seldom has a mother loved her child as tenderly as Blanche, the saintly queen of France, loved her son Louis, who afterward ascended the throne of that country, and is known as St. Louis. On one occasion when this pious mother had been giving her son, then a mere boy, some wise counsels she concluded in these words: “O my darling child, you are the most precious thing I possess upon earth, yet I would a thousand times sooner see you lying dead at my feet than know that you had committed one single grievous sin.”
In the same way would your parents speak to you, in a similar manner would I also address you. You are very dear to us, but we would rather you should die in the grace of God than fall into grievous sin and lose your innocence.
The principal care of your parents and confessor is to preserve you from that greatest of all misfortunes, the loss of your innocence. To this end will be directed the grave warning I now address to you. To inspire you with a wholesome horror of the vice which is opposed to chastity, I shall depict its deplorable consequences.
When the lily of purity has withered, when it is crushed and destroyed, what are the results? Very sad indeed. When a young girl has been weak enough to yield to temptation, and has lost her innocence, she must, after her grievous fall immediately seek to rise up again, and entirely to avoid the occasion of sin. Unless she does this she will probably fall a second and a third time; she will despair of ever being able to break the fetters of sin; she will abandon herself to vice, and be led into violating nearly all the commandments. There are too many instances of this. Many a girl who was formerly innocent and good, a lily in the garden of God, the joy and hope of her parents and friends, has later on been so unfortunate as to stray from the right path, because she was not sufficiently watchful, and especially because after her first fall she did not at once rise up and resolutely turn her back upon the occasion of sin.
The first consequence always is this: The unhappy girl no longer cares to pray; she gives up her daily devotions. Then she begins to doubt whether there really is a God, an eternity; sometimes from false shame she conceals her sins when she goes to confession, thus rendering her confession and communion sacrilegious. She continues to offend God, and ends by despairing of his mercy altogether.
What terrible anxiety such a daughter causes her parents! She treats them with rudeness and impertinence, refuses to follow their advice, laughs their exhortations to scorn, embitters and shortens their lives. Sometimes unwedded mothers destroy their illicit offspring and even take their own lives. Over and over again we read in the newspapers that young persons have committed suicide as the result of “unhappy love affairs,” for so they are termed.
Yet this is not all! This dreadful sin plunges its victims into poverty, misery, and the utmost degradation. The girl who is infected with this vice is, as a rule, an idle, vain, conceited, and extravagant creature. She perhaps receives large sums of money; but this money is the wages of sin; a curse rests upon it instead of a blessing. And when her beauty fades, and she can no longer make up for the loss of it by artificial means, she sinks into abject poverty, she is shunned by all, and probably ends her days in a hospital, poorhouse, penitentiary, or even in the street.
To quote one instance out of many which might be brought forward: In a certain town there lived a druggist. He was a well-educated man, and had an excellent business. His only daughter was led astray at the early age of sixteen by one who took advantage of her youth and ignorance. When the fact became only too apparent, and thus came to the knowledge of her parents, her mother fell into a state of insanity and had to be confined in an asylum for lunatics. Shortly afterward her father committed suicide. The mother died in the asylum, and the unhappy girl was left alone in the world with the offspring of her shame.
You may possibly think that I am exaggerating, that I am painting the gloomy picture in hues more sombre than the reality. It is a cause for thankfulness that such awful consequences do not invariably follow a first fall into this sin, but it is always attended by the greatest danger. Therefore, my dear child, watch and pray, make every effort to preserve yourself from such a fall. Seek to preserve the lily of purity in all its beauty to the end of your days. Suffer any loss rather than sacrifice your innocence.
Your innocence guard with the utmost care—
Once lost, there is nought that loss can repair.
How sweet the fragrance it sheds around—
No flower more fair on earth can be found.